[ windspeaker confidential ] Elisapie Isaac

Page 16

Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?

Elisapie Isaac: What one quality? That's a nice question. I guess a friend who is able to really listen. To put his things aside ... just the quality of someone to just listen.

W: What is it that really makes you mad?

E.I.: I think it's all the people profiting on young children, that's really frustrating. Someone who's manipulating in front of me and controlling a child so much, I think ... and someone who wants to control everything I guess. Someone who's a control freak just drives me crazy.

W: When are you at your happiest?

E.I.: I guess when I'm at home and it's springtime and I'm in the comfort of my home. And when it's a beautiful day and everything is peaceful at home, I think it's really good for me, to find yourself. I guess just to find your home, it could be anywhere, but to be at peace with your home and to have freedom and to have achieved things and you're just, like, taking it easy.

W: What one word best describes you when you are at your worst?

E.I.: Watch out! Keep away! Because I need a lot of space all of a sudden. I tend to just say, 'OK, please, get out of my face.' Or I just run off. I just go to take time to be by myself. Ya, I can explode.

W: What one person do you most admire and why?

E.I.: I guess it's this lady, Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, an elderly lady who worked all her life for education for Inuit people. She's an older woman now. She's worked so much with the youth and has been so involved in all the organization of our new society ... So she's just someone who has been very much involved in the social issues. She's from Kangirsujuaq.

W: What is the most difficult thing you've ever had to do?

E.I.: I guess leave from home ... to go to the big city. That was very difficult. The actual moving, not when I arrived, but to tell all my family and my friends that I am leaving for the south.

W: What is your greatest accomplishment?

E.I.: I guess it's my film. (Si le temps le permet, which means "If the weather permits," is the critically-acclaimed short film chronicling the struggle of the Inuit people of Nunavik to keep their culture alive in a modern world.) That was very, very hard to do. That was very emotional and very personal and very scary at the same time. You know, questioning my Inuit identity, questioning the Elders, questioning our society. That was very hard to do and I think it's been a great accomplishment to feel good about it.

W: What one goal remains out of reach?

E.I.: Making my cabin in the north, my summer cabin, my northern house.

W: If you couldn't do what you're doing today, what would you be doing?

E.I.: If I wasn't doing what I'm doing? I'd probably be up north with the children making artwork, I guess, and anything that's involving children and fun things, children and art.

W: What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?

E.I.: Best piece of advice? Let it go. Learn to just let it go and not try to control it and just let it go.

W: Did you take it?

E.I.: Yes, I took it and it was the most amazing feeling in the whole world to learn to let it go and not try to be good and not try to be perfect and just say OK. Let it go.

W: How do you hope to be remembered?

E.I.: As a nurturing person, I guess. A nurturing person who made people feel good no matter who they are. Just having been someone very open. I think it's very important for me to have real, simple, human contact with people without exaggerating it ... It's important for me to be approachable for people ... and for having been a good, real, beautiful woman. I guess we're all wanting that. To have been a real, not just physical thing, but just real, someone who had a femininity also. I think it's important. I'm not a man. I'm a woman. So I think it's important also.